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Want to Write for Smart Drug Smarts?

Have something you’re dying to get off your chest (or out of your brain) about neuroscience, nootropics, cognitive enhancement, or the future?

If so, we’d love to hear about it. In fact, scratch that — we’d love to read about it.

And maybe the rest of the Smart Drug Smarts community would, too.

We are open to submissions from writers who want a forum to reach brain-hackers, neuroscience-lovers, and personal optimization fiends. Heck, if you find yourself at this page, you’re probably in one of these groups yourself — maybe all of them.

Submission Process

Before you write anything, please send us a short proposal. We’ll reply to let you know if we’d like you to go ahead with the piece, and ask you for further information at that point. Please use the format below even if you’ve flown in the face of convention and already have written something. This is by far the best way to get yourself featured on our site. 🙂

Please address your email to [email protected] with the subject: “I’d like to write for Smart Drug Smarts!”

In the body of the email use this format:

Title: [Self-explanatory]

Two-sentence summary: [What’s your article about?]

Other info: [Anything else you feel is relevant for us to know: Does your piece relate to a date-specific event? Is it in response to another article somewhere on the web? Is it part of a series? Etc, etc. ]

Previous Writing: [Specific links to other work you’ve published, preferably in a similar field, but can be about anything. We really just would like to get a feel for your writing style.]

More than one idea to write about? Send them all in one email, but include separate Title,Summary and Other Info headings for each.

Writers’ Guidelines (for after we say “Yes”)

Content + Length

Have a look at the articles we’ve already posted on SmartDrugSmarts.com to get an idea of the subject matter we’re into. Many of our articles are not strictly informational, but lean towards the opinion-based, food-for-thought side of things.

If you’d like to write something similar for us, please make sure that you:

Have sufficient reference material to back up your opinions, and you’ve included appropriate links within your piece.

Dive deep into your subject matter. Aim for a word count of around 3000. Use concise language to convey your point. And be specific where possible. Finally, ask yourself: “Would a someone with no prior knowledge about cognitive enhancement understand what I’m talking about?”

Self-experiments — Want to try a new-to-you brain-betterment intervention, and write about your findings? An example of the format we’re looking for, here.

How-To’s — Are you trained in a brain-related field? Have you self-experimented past the 10,000 hour mark, and into expert territory?

Brain Event Coverage — If there’s an upcoming brain conference or event near you that you’d like to attend and write about, please let us know 3-4 weeks in advance. We’ll also accept articles relating to upcoming events if there is enough information available beforehand to spin an entire article out of. Online events make the cut as well – for an example of the type of article we’d expect ahead of time, click here, or here.

Format + Editing

This should absolutely go without saying, but we’re saying it anyway: check your work for spelling and grammatical mistakes. We will not accept articles that we have to sift through for rogue apostrophes.

Send your final piece in a Google Drive document. Make sure link sharing is on and set to “anyone with a link can edit.” Format this document in the way you’d like it to look on Word Press once it’s published. I.e. include all in-line images, bolding, bullets, paragraph breaks, etc, etc.

Also, include a .txt file of the article, with HTML formatting, so that it can be directly copied from there into WordPress.

Images + Bonus Content

In most instances, we will have our designer create images to accompany guest posts.

If you’d like us to add any in-line images to the article, add them in the appropriate spots in the Google Drive version of the finished piece and attach the original JPEG file (in as high of a resolution as possible).

If you have any downloadable files you’d like to include with the article (PDFs, etc.) please include those as attachments once you send your final piece.